


Silence

by Starfire (kalypsobean)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bloodplay, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Knifeplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 09:18:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8157079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/Starfire
Summary: He trusts Nat with this because she gets it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt _MCU, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, knives and bloodplay_ by scribble_myname at [comment_fic ](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/595248.html?thread=99502640#t99502640)

He trusts Nat with this because Nat gets it; she spends most of her life in silence, too, though hers is sometimes a different kind. There's value in both being silent, and existing in silence, and sometimes Clint wonders if they're a matched set because they fill each other's gaps, making a whole person who is more because of what they show each other.

He lets Nat do this because somehow, even though he can't hear her, he knows where she is. It's never quite a surprise when she touches him; he knows that first, she'll trace where she wants to mark with a nail, sometimes two, and she's always next to him, her thigh pressed against his side, as if to tell him that he can stop her, that she will look out for him if he doesn't. He can feel the ghost of her touch when she's gone, too, and he imagines what it will look like, in the mirror, after. The rest, he knows - the burn every time he moves, the sting under the shower, the tug as the skin knits back together and returns to being her canvas instead of her art.

He always flinches the first time her knife touches his skin, even when he knows it's coming; he can never quite prepare for the way it's always just a few degrees cooler than his skin, or how it's so thin, how it barely hurts once it's layers deep in his skin. She knows him now, and her first cut is always on his left shoulder. The skin is growing tougher there, but she always leaves a neat mark, as if it's a greeting. It means last chance to stop, time to relax, let me have control, trust me again. He always closes his eyes after that, so there's nothing but her and him, together.

He always opens his eyes to her hand on his chin, saying it's over, you did well, you are perfect, I am yours, and sees her lips, red with his blood. By the time she shows him what she's done, all the blood has been licked away, leaving only her mark and a few droplets, squeezed out when he moved.

Today it is a hawk. Last week it was a maze of lines, which he later learned was part of the New York subway map, and next week it will be something else. Sometimes the old lines cross under new ones, and on those days Nat will hold him after, her head on his shoulder, his blood in her hair. Today, though, she is stoic; today was for him.

He touches her hand, her knife hand, and he nods; she helps him sit back down as the meaningless noise floods back in.


End file.
